Well tomorrow Kevin Rudd will say sorry to the Aboriginals of Australia for the Stolen Generation during the 20th Century.

I personally believe this is a terrible idea, with all the things we give them they still show us no respect and take everything they're given for granted. As if these 1/8th Aboriginals who have grown up in a white society, look nothing like Aboriginals and probably don't even know what the stolen generation was, deserve an apology. What infuriated me the most was tonight on 7 News. The guy said, 'Sorry, one small word that will mean alot. Another small word the Aboriginal people want to hear, is compensation.' Now red flag, they get hundreds of millions of dollars, given jobs, university positions, land, housing and they still want compensation....

We need a hardline approach to Aboriginals, no pussy footing around like we've been doing for the last 30 years.

We've been royally duped. Kevin Rudd has deceived the nation by not revealing his intention to do this during the election campaign. I'm convinced that if he had done this, he would not be in power today. Not because Australians, myself included, think that what happened was right, far from it. But because of the admission of liability and the claims for compensation that are bound to follow.

The public coffers are open for a free-for-all. The cost cutting being done by labor is for a slush fund to pay out the stolen generation, not to ease inflation like we've been lead to believe. Like cutting $400 million is going to do much.

I would be interested to see what happened in Canada after they said sorry. Any Canadians care to shed some light?

The things aboriginal people went through during the time of the early-mid part of the 20th Century was atrocious and inhumane. I believe that sorry is one way we can solidly put things behind us. On the other hand, compensation and priorities indigenous people get over the every-day Australian is in some cases, quite ridiculous. Just because they have relatives who are Aborigines. If Ruddy and his Kevin07 mob want to stop the rift between the aboriginal people and stock standard Australians, there should be no compensation, no priorities in Unis, or anything of that sort. Possibly only in situations where the person may be in dire need of help, ie, to go to recieve basic education. Everything else should be their own choice, like every other Australian.

Quoting Bill142 (Reply 1):Not because Australians, myself included, think that what happened was right, far from it. But because of the admission of liability and the claims for compensation that are bound to follow.

What you two appear to be saying is that (according to my information) horrible human rights abuses in the past should simply be shrugged off because once you did the morally upstanding thing and actually expressed your compassion and collective apologies you feared financial implications.

What you are saying could easily be expanded on Germany looking the other way and shrugging off the Holocaust just because there could have been financially inconvenient repercussions.

And I must say I would indeed be ashamed of my country if that was the case, and I am in fact ashamed for those cases where victims have been treated less than properly even so.

I am aware of the different magnitude of the two issues, but the fundamental moral aspects appear to be similar enough.

Klaus, I think you are unaware of the issue with many aboriginal people in Australia. The Aborigines have been compensated for some time now, trying to give them a better chance in life etc. Despite what was done by the Australian government, tens of thousands of Aboriginals squander this money with some serious substance abuse, whether it be with alcohol, sniffing petrol or other drugs, which has resulted in a lot of violence, murders, rapes, etc.

What is the point in giving this money, when the majority will spend it on something that will only dig them further into a hole? It may be unfortunate for many who need this money, but when tax payers money is going towards buying illicit substances and alcohol, is the government really spending the money on the right sorts of things?

Quoting 9VSRH (Reply 4):Klaus, I think you are unaware of the issue with many aboriginal people in Australia. The Aborigines have been compensated for some time now, trying to give them a better chance in life etc. Despite what was done by the Australian government, tens of thousands of Aboriginals squander this money with some serious substance abuse, whether it be with alcohol, sniffing petrol or other drugs, which has resulted in a lot of violence, murders, rapes, etc.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the entirely moral question whether or not the majority should collectively apologize for human rights abuses collectively committed in their name against a minority.

The social situation of many aboriginal australians is probably an issue as well, but it is a separate one.

It is the biggest crock of shit if there ever was one. No one in the current government was responsible and when he says "We" say sorry it better not be on behalf of Australia because i most certainly do not say sorry. What was it only 2 in 5 people in WA thought there should be an apology and that says something for this state.

Look until you live with them and go to a community you will never ever understand how bad they really are..........

Most of the people who were effected are dead, you look at the ones who were removed many become very successful people, they seem to forget thats because of being removed.

Had a good email today which basically outlines the whole of what they get:

Quote:
AUSTRALIAN APOLOGY TO THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION

We apologise for giving you doctors and free medical care, which allows you to survive and multiply so that you can demand apologies.

We apologise for helping you to read and teaching you the English language and thus we opened up to you the entire European civilisation, thought and enterprise.

We feel that we must apologise for building hundreds of homes for you, which you have vandalised and destroyed.

We apologise for giving you law and order which has helped prevent you from slaughtering one another and using the unfortunate for food purposes.

We apologise for developing large farms and properties, which today feed you people, where before, you had the benefits of living off the land and starving during droughts.

We apologise for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace that animal skins you used before.

We apologise for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.

We apologise for paying off your vehicle when you fail to pay the installments

We apologise for giving you free travel anywhere, whenever.

We apologise for giving each and every member of your family $100.00 and free travel to attend an aboriginal funeral.

We apologise for not charging you rent on any lands when white people have to pay.

We apologise for giving you interest free loans.

We apologise for developing oil wells and minerals, including gold and diamonds which you never used and had no idea of their value.

We apologise for developing Ayers rock and Kakadu, and handing them over to you so that you get all the money.

We apologise for giving you $1.7 billion per year for your 250,000 people, which is $48,000.00 per aboriginal man, woman and child.

We apologise for working hard to pay taxes that finance your welfare, medical care, education, etc to the tune of $1.2 billion each year.

We apologise for you having to approach the aboriginal affairs department to verify the above figures. For the trouble you will have identifying the “uncle toms” in your own community who are getting richer and leaving some of you living in squalor and poverty.

We do apologise. We really do.

We humbly beg your forgiveness for all the above sins.

We are only too happy to take back all the above and return you to the paradise of the “outback”, whenever you are ready.

EVERY single detail above is 100% correct and yet they complain they get nothing!!!!

The Australian Government is apologising to the Aboriginal people for the "Stolen Generation". Vast amounts of Aboriginal children were removed from their families on purely racist reasons.

The media generally does not deviate from this line.

However I have heard one journalist (Andrew Bolt) ask various Aboriginal leaders to name 10 people who are from the "Stolen Generation".

He has asked this at least 3 times that I know of and has never been answered.

No one else in the mainstream media seems to be asking the question.

Now I will be the first to admit that Bolt can be a bit of a loon. But I like that he is always willing to question the common thought. That is what I want the media to do. Shed as much light on the debate as possible.

Did this "Stolen generation" actually happen? I don't know. If it did, I too would love at least 10 names. Then my position gets slightly complicated.

I dont agree that we should apologise. But I think we still should. It is obviously an important issue that needs to be addressed and this is an important first step.

I would however ask this. All those Aboriginal groups that have devoted so much time and energy into lobbying government and the media for "the apology" should now in return put equal energy and effort into fixing the problems in Aboriginal communities.

Quoting Klaus (Reply 3):I am aware of the different magnitude of the two issues, but the fundamental moral aspects appear to be similar enough.

The fundamental moral aspects are not even in the same universe let alone ball park

There is something very ugly about this thread. Thousands of people in a minority, disadvantaged group in Australia continue to suffer from a substandard life and the only thing said in this thread by Australians is how they resent their government apologizing for an atrocity committed against this group of people in the past?

Here is what happened in Canada. We pushed our First Nations people off their productive land, through force and/or conniving, and settled them in ridiculously unproductive, isolated land. We took away their means of making a living for themselves. We considered them to be less than human and denied them the basic rights that non-Native Canadians had. We gave them nothing and then pointed, laughed and sneered when they were unable to make anything of themselves, and they descended into a cycle of drink and abuse. Now we have a community that has lived with this hopelessness for generations. THIS ISALL THEY KNOW because this is what we forced them to do. And don't just say "they could move into the city and make something of themselves". With what money? With what support system? I moved from my small Canadian city in Northern Ontario to southern Ontario and even with sufficient funds and an excellent support system it was still a culture shock for me. Now imagine that you have no money, you've grown up in the middle of nowhere, your role models are beaten down, alcoholic, sick, and without hope because that's how their parents were...that's how their grandparents were...that's how their great-grandparents were. It takes a very special, strong person to escape that.

Do I say sorry for the mistakes of past Canadian governments? You bet I do. And by the way, my family has only been in Canada since about 1920. My ancestors had nothing to do with it. But I am Canadian and so I share in the sorrow and responsibility for the situation - and more timely, how we try to make it right.

Canada is a wealthy country and we owe it to our First Nations peoples to try to right the mistakes of past Canadians by helping in any way we can. Does this mean that we should support them with funds? Absolutely. Compensation for past injustices? Look up "residential schools" and see why compensation is well deserved. We screwed up people so badly that they lost all faith and hope in themselves. Damned straight we owe them something. Are we doing everything correctly? Hell no. If we were, the situation on so many reserves would not be so sad and hopeless. Look up Davis Inlet for a case where the government tried to do the right thing and it still didn't work. But we have to keep trying. There are signs of hope. Maybe one day we can get it right and help First Nations people to live again as equals in Canadian society.

The day when I hear Canadians stop their bitching about "Natives" will be a very good one. I'm really saddened to see the anger on this thread from Australians toward Aborigines. Your government saying "sorry" is an excellent first step. I hope it represents the thoughts of the majority of Australians - but sadly, I suspect it does not.

Yes well, welcome to the fact that most Australians are inherently racist and xenophobic. Australians like to paint themselves as embracing to all cultures due to their multicultural country, but behind the scenes they are as racist and xenophobic as any other culture is. It's human nature after all.

Before the post is considered flamebait, I am from Australia.

Regarding the whole sorry thing, I for one am happy that it is going ahead. I think it needs to be said though, both because it was a bad period in our history, and also to shut up all the people who continually whine about wanting a sorry.

To the Government's credit, they did deliberately word the whole "sorry" thing to do their best not to leave themselves open to compensation claims. So really, I think what's done is done and it's time to move on.... so hooray for the apology to close that particular chapter in Australia's history.

Quoting Klaus (Reply 5):That has absolutely nothing to do with the entirely moral question whether or not the majority should collectively apologize for human rights abuses collectively committed in their name against a minority.

But when is enough?

At what point does Anglo guilt stop?

Aussies are sick and tired of having to pay for the sins of the fathers to the Aboriginals...

Canadians are sick and tired of the moral flaggelation for the sins of their fathers to First Nations people...

Americans are sick and tired of the guilt about slavery against blacks....

When does it end?

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 6):Had a good email today which basically outlines the whole of what they get:

Quoting Slider (Reply 11):
Quoting Klaus (Reply 5):
That has absolutely nothing to do with the entirely moral question whether or not the majority should collectively apologize for human rights abuses collectively committed in their name against a minority.

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 9):Here is what happened in Canada. We pushed our First Nations people off their productive land, through force and/or conniving, and settled them in ridiculously unproductive, isolated land. We took away their means of making a living for themselves. We considered them to be less than human and denied them the basic rights that non-Native Canadians had. We gave them nothing and then pointed, laughed and sneered when they were unable to make anything of themselves, and they descended into a cycle of drink and abuse. Now we have a community that has lived with this hopelessness for generations. THIS ISALL THEY KNOW because this is what we forced them to do.

I think you should read Pilotdude09's post. What we have done to the Aboriginals is so far away from what the Candians did. We took them off their unproductive land, gave them good land. We have given them so many ways to earn money, can imagine going to university/college for free? Aboriginals have many more rights than we Anglo-Australians, we encouraged them to earn money and live themselves yet they still descended into alcohol abuse and violence. They chose to do this themselves...

The parents of the stolen generation were alcoholics, last year we had to do an excursion to listen to some Aboriginals talk about stuff. They said often fathers would beat and kill their own family. Noone cries foul these days when the Department of Community Services takes a child away from abusive parents, yet for the Aboriginals they must have preferred to stay with their parents. There were as many or more kids saved and given the chance for a great future.

The average lifespan is roughly 20 years less than the Anglo age. Even though many of them are given free medical care, free housing.

Aboriginals commit so many crimes yet nobody cares, a few years ago my mum had her car stolen by some Aboriginals, she had just filled it with petrol had gone in to pay and they stole it. Took it out into the bush, and burnt it. The cops caught them , they were 12, 13 and 14 years old, this was the 8th time they had been caught for the same offence and they were out on bail 6 hours later!

I beg to differ, Australia should hold a referendum on wether or not Aboriginals should be treated eqaully to other Australians. Which of course would mean the abolishment of the Department of Aboriginals Affairs. I don't see any Department of Afghani Affairs, after all they were here before we were, they should be treated better.

Equality is all I'm after, the Aborignals say the want equality and then say so give us more compensation, Thats not how it works sunshine....

Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13):I think you should read Pilotdude09's post. What we have done to the Aboriginals is so far away from what the Candians did. We took them off their unproductive land, gave them good land. We have given them so many ways to earn money, can imagine going to university/college for free? Aboriginals have many more rights than we Anglo-Australians, we encouraged them to earn money and live themselves yet they still descended into alcohol abuse and violence. They chose to do this themselves...

Please read my post again. While there are differences between what happened to the Aborigines in Australia and the First Nations peoples in Canada, there are also similarities. Are you suggesting that Aborigines have always been given advantages such as free medical care and university? Ever since Australia was settled by Europeans? Is it not true that Aborigines were for generations treated as less than human, hunted by Europeans, and enslaved?

Nobody chooses to live in alcohol abuse and violence. It often happens because of past family situation. If you take a proud family, impoverish them, tell them that they're less than human, and kill some of them, take away their kids, beat them down for generations, and then all of a sudden throw money at them and tell them to pick themselves up out of the gutter - while still demonstrating a lack of respect for them - do you really think that this family can quickly become prosperous again? Consider that this family lives in an area where there are many other families like them. There is a community feeling of hopelessness, ill health, substance abuse, domestic violence. How easy is it to escape this?

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 9):There is something very ugly about this thread. Thousands of people in a minority, disadvantaged group in Australia continue to suffer from a substandard life and the only thing said in this thread by Australians is how they resent their government apologizing for an atrocity committed against this group of people in the past?

Yes the Aborigines continue to suffer. but why? No one can answer it and no one can solve it. KRudd has picked the easy way out. Its not hard to stand up and read a speech.

Quoting ClassicLover (Reply 10): and also to shut up all the people who continually whine about wanting a sorry.

I said this in a earlier post. I dont agree with the apology but I also think it should be done so we can move on and get to the serious work of solving the Aboriginal peoples plight

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 9):this thread by Australians is how they resent their government apologizing for an atrocity committed against this group of people in the past?

What attocity are you speaking of? You mean the one where Aboriginal children who were being abused were taken from their families and clothed and fed and sent to school. You mean that attrocity? Apprently "many thousands" were taken from their families for purely racist reasons. I and Andrew Bolt are still waiting for the names of at least 10 people who were stolen purely for rascist reasons.

I am quite open anout this subject but I reject the term attrocity

Quoting Klaus (Reply 12):t will probably warm your heart to hear that there are some people in Germany as well who'd love nothing more than to just forget about the Holocaust.

There is no way the Holocaust should even be thought about being mentioned in this discussion.

Quoting 9VSRH (Reply 4):The Aborigines have been compensated for some time now, trying to give them a better chance in life etc. Despite what was done by the Australian government, tens of thousands of Aboriginals squander this money with some serious substance abuse, whether it be with alcohol, sniffing petrol or other drugs, which has resulted in a lot of violence, murders, rapes, etc.

Quoting Bill142 (Reply 1):
We've been royally duped. Kevin Rudd has deceived the nation by not revealing his intention to do this during the election campaign.

he did, get out of the rock you've been living under!

Quoting Bill142 (Reply 1):
But because of the admission of liability and the claims for compensation that are bound to follow.

good, those affected deserve compensation, deal with it...if it were your family affected you'd be banging on the door for compensation too.

Quoting Bill142 (Reply 1):
The public coffers are open for a free-for-all. The cost cutting being done by labor is for a slush fund to pay out the stolen generation, not to ease inflation like we've been lead to believe. Like cutting $400 million is going to do much.

well it beats middle class welfare that Howard was all for, right? of course middle class welfare doesn't add to inflation?

Quoting QFA380 (Thread starter):
We need a hardline approach to Aboriginals, no pussy footing around like we've been doing for the last 30 years.

when you've been on the planet longer than your years then I might take notice of this garbage...do yourself a favour and read a little of our history before commenting.

Quoting QFA380 (Thread starter):
with all the things we give them they still show us no respect and take everything they're given for granted.

what have we given them? what have you given them personally? get off your high horse and realise that this is NOT our land, it was inhabited long before white man ever set foot here, now tell me again, what is it that you've given the Aboriginal people?

Quoting QFA380 (Thread starter):
As if these 1/8th Aboriginals who have grown up in a white society, look nothing like Aboriginals and probably don't even know what the stolen generation was, deserve an apology. What infuriated me the most was tonight on 7 News. The guy said, 'Sorry, one small word that will mean alot. Another small word the Aboriginal people want to hear, is compensation.' Now red flag, they get hundreds of millions of dollars, given jobs, university positions, land, housing and they still want compensation....

fool, the apology is directed at those directly affected by this GOVERNMENT POLICY of times gone by.

do me a favour and don't post about this again, I might rip you apart in my next reply, you sound xenophobic and racist and like a jingoistic nationalist. Your type frighten the hell out of me.

child abuse...there's an answer for you? or you forgotten that this occurs to our black folk?

Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13):
What we have done to the Aboriginals is so far away from what the Candians did. We took them off their unproductive land, gave them good land.

no, we took them from their family and gave them to white families..that was the government policy.

Quoting CupraIbiza (Reply 15):
You mean the one where Aboriginal children who were being abused were taken from their families and clothed and fed and sent to school.

don't simplify it with bullshit like this, for the most part they were taken because of their aboriginality, perhaps you missed Fred Chaney on the 730 report last night?

here is his comments...

FRED CHANEY: Well I don't think there's any doubt that the basis of removal was race. I mean again, I had direct personal experience of that where I was actually able to prevent the removal of six children because the mother went and got a lawyer. And it was, I was told the first time one had been defended when I got it through the court. There was no question of neglect in that case. And I said, "Why were you doing this?" And they said, "There are too many Aboriginals in East Perth and we're moving them out." Now I mean what a disgusting statement.

Quoting CupraIbiza (Reply 15):
I and Andrew Bolt are still waiting for the names of at least 10 people who were stolen purely for rascist reasons.

so where's the list of those removed because of abuse that was proven?

Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13):
The parents of the stolen generation were alcoholics

prove it...all of it, or shut it!

Quoting QFA380 (Thread starter):
with all the things we give them they still show us no respect and take everything they're given for granted.

god you speak like there are NO good Aboriginals in this country who've made it on their own...ffs, shut it already!

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 6):
No one in the current government was responsible and when he says "We" say sorry it better not be on behalf of Australia because i most certainly do not say sorry.

but it was still previous GOVERNMENT POLICY to remove children from their families...its about time a government stood up and took responsibility for this appalling policy.

Quoting CupraIbiza (Reply 15):There is no way the Holocaust should even be thought about being mentioned in this discussion.

Morally responsible handling of past injustice is the issue. And as disparate as the magnitudes undoubtedly were, the moral issues of how modern democracies should face their less than proud moments from the past are quite similar. Or is one of them less modern or less democratic today?

If we're only doing the right thing as long as it's cheap and convenient, it stops being morally relevant.

Quoting CupraIbiza (Reply 15):What attocity are you speaking of? You mean the one where Aboriginal children who were being abused were taken from their families and clothed and fed and sent to school. You mean that attrocity?

Are you seriously defending the practice of taking the Aboriginal children? It wasn't only children who were abused who were taken. They weren't all sent to happy happy amusement parks. They were also sent out to work, were beaten and sexually abused by those who were supposed to care from them.

Mr Neville [the Chief Protector of WA] holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population. Sixty years ago, he said, there were over 60,000 full-blooded natives in Western Australia. Today there are only 20,000. In time there would be none. Perhaps it would take one hundred years, perhaps longer, but the race was dying. The pure blooded Aboriginal was not a quick breeder. On the other hand the half-caste was. In Western Australia there were half-caste families of twenty and upwards. That showed the magnitude of the problem (quoted by Buti 1995 on page 35).

In Neville's view, skin colour was the key to absorption. Children with lighter skin colour would automatically be accepted into non-Indigenous society and lose their Aboriginal identity.

Assuming the theory to be correct, argument in government circles centred around the optimum age for forced removal. At a Royal Commission in South Australia in 1913 'experts' disagreed whether children should be removed at birth or about two years old.

The 'protectionist' legislation was generally used in preference to the general child welfare legislation to remove Indigenous children. That way government officials acting under the authority of the Chief Protector or the Board could simply order the removal of an Indigenous child without having to establish to a court's satisfaction that the child was neglected.

......

However the notion that people forced off the reserves would merge with the non-Indigenous population took no account of the discrimination they faced. Unable to find work and denied the social security benefits that non-Indigenous people were granted as of right, they lived in 'shanty' towns near the reserves or on the edges of non-Indigenous settlement.

.....

Implicit in the assimilation policy was the idea current among non-Indigenous people that there was nothing of value in Indigenous culture.

Nobody who knows anything about these groups can deny that their members are socially and culturally deprived. What has to be recognized is that the integration of these groups differs in no way from that of the highly integrated groups of economically depressed Europeans found in the slums of any city and in certain rural areas of New South Wales. In other words, these groups are just like groups of poor whites. The policy for them must be one of welfare. Improve their lot so that they can take their place economically and socially in the general community and not merely around the periphery. Once this is done, the break-up of such groups will be rapid (Bell 1964 page 68).

.....

Under the general child welfare law, Indigenous children had to be found to be 'neglected', 'destitute' or 'uncontrollable'. These terms were applied by courts much more readily to Indigenous children than non-Indigenous children as the definitions and interpretations of those terms assumed a non-Indigenous model of child-rearing and regarded poverty as synonymous with neglect. It was not until 1966 that all eligibility restrictions on Indigenous people's receipt of social security benefits were fully lifted. Before that time Indigenous families in need could not rely on the financial support of government which was designed to hold non-Indigenous families together in times of need. Moreover, ongoing surveillance of their lives meant that any deviation from the acceptable non-Indigenous 'norm' came to the notice of the authorities immediately.

From the late 1940s the other jurisdictions followed New South Wales in applying the general child welfare law to Indigenous children while still treating removed Indigenous children differently. State government child welfare practice was marked more by continuity than change. The same welfare staff and the same police who had previously removed children from their families simply because they were Aboriginal now utilised the neglect procedures to remove just as many Aboriginal children from their families. 'Aboriginal parents were left on the margins of Australian society while attempts were made to absorb their children into non-Aboriginal society' (Armitage 1995 page 67).

The children were still being removed in bulk, but it wasn't because they were part white. They had social workers that'd go around from house to house and look in the cupboards and things like that and they'd say the children were neglected (Molly Dyer evidence 219, speaking of the practice of the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board in the 1950s).
At the third Native Welfare Conference held in 1951 the newly appointed federal Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, vigorously propounded the benefits to Aboriginal people of assimilation and urged greater consistency in practice between all the States and the Northern Territory. Hasluck pointed out that Australia's treatment of its Indigenous people made a mockery of its promotion of human rights at the international level (Hasluck 1953 page 9).

The conference agreed that assimilation was the aim of 'native welfare measures'.

Assimilation means, in practical terms, that, in the course of time, it is expected that all persons of aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia will live like other white Australians do (Hasluck 1953 page 16).
During the 1950s and 1960s even greater numbers of Indigenous children were removed from their families to advance the cause of assimilation. Not only were they removed for alleged neglect, they were removed to attend school in distant places, to receive medical treatment and to be adopted out at birth.

Note the bolded section. The government took away the Aborigine kids because their families were poor - but Aborigine families didn't have access to the same social benefits as white families so of course they were more likely to be poor!

Quoting ScarletHarlot (Reply 9):We considered them to be less than human and denied them the basic rights that non-Native Canadians had. We gave them nothing and then pointed, laughed and sneered when they were unable to make anything of themselves, and they descended into a cycle of drink and abuse. Now we have a community that has lived with this hopelessness for generations.

It sounds like the Aborigines might have had a much more similar experience to the Canadian First Nations peoples than might be thought at first.

This removal of Aboriginal kids continued until the 1960s! So today you have people age 50 who were subject to this - who were taken away from their families for made-up reasons - were told that their families were dead or no longer wanted them - were sent out to work for foster families and subject to higher rates of sexual and physical abuse - were unable to assimilate. This same report suggests that 10% - 50% of children were removed. All because of a government and a country that subjected the Aboriginal population to different standards of human rights than the non-Aboriginal population.

How can a family, a society, an ethnicity benefit from and prosper under such a terrible, and I will use the word, atrocity?

Quoting CupraIbiza (Reply 15):I and Andrew Bolt are still waiting for the names of at least 10 people who were stolen purely for rascist reasons.

You will never get this. The records are not there. But you cannot tell me that out of the thousands of kids who were removed, all but ten were because they were being abused.

Most of us girls were thinking white in the head but were feeling black inside. We weren't black or white. We were a very lonely, lost and sad displaced group of people. We were taught to think and act like a white person, but we didn't know how to think and act like an Aboriginal. We didn't know anything about our culture. We were completely brainwashed to think only like a white person. When they went to mix in white society, they found they were not accepted (because) they were Aboriginal. When they went and mixed with Aborigines, some found they couldn't identify with them either, because they had too much white ways in them. So that they were neither black nor white. They were simply a lost generation of children. I know. I was one of them.

Confidential submission 617, New South Wales: woman removed at 8 years with her 3 sisters in the 1940s; placed in Cootamundra Girls' Home.

Not an atrocity...read the following and tell me that wide ranging, government sanctioned sexual, physical and emotional abuse is not an atrocity and does not deserve someone saying that they're sorry!!!

So I went through foster homes, and I never stayed in one any longer than two months ... Then you'd be moved onto the next place and it went on and on and on. That's one of the main reasons I didn't finish primary school.

Confidential evidence 316, Tasmania.

My mother and brother could speak our language and my father could speak his. I can't speak my language. Aboriginal people weren't allowed to speak their language while white people were around. They had to go out into the bush or talk their lingoes on their own. Aboriginal customs like initiation were not allowed. We could not leave Cherbourg to go to Aboriginal traditional festivals. We could have a corroboree if the Protector issued a permit. It was completely up to him. I never had a chance to learn about my traditional and customary way of life when I was on the reserves.

Confidential submission 110, Queensland: woman removed in the 1940s.

If we got letters, you'd end up with usually 'the weather's fine', 'we love you' and 'from your loving mother' or whatever. We didn't hear or see what was written in between. And that was one way they kept us away from our families. They'd turn around and say to you, 'See, they don't care about you'. Later on, when I left the home, I asked my mother, 'How come you didn't write letters?' She said, 'But we did'. I said, 'Well, we never got them'. We were all rostered to do work and one of the girls was doing Matron's office, and there was all these letters that the girls had written back to the parents and family - the answers were all in the garbage bin. And they were wondering why we didn't write. That was one way they stopped us keeping in contact with our families. Then they had the hide to turn around and say, 'They don't love you. They don't care about you'.

Confidential evidence 450, New South Wales: woman removed at 2 years in the 1940s, first to Bomaderry Children's Home, then to Cootamundra Girls' Home; now working to assist former Cootamundra inmates.

We were told our mother was an alcoholic and that she was a prostitute and she didn't care about us. They [foster family] used to warn us that when we got older we'd have to watch it because we'd turn into sluts and alcoholics, so we had to be very careful. If you were white you didn't have that dirtiness in you ... It was in our breed, in us to be like that.

Confidential evidence 529, New South Wales: woman fostered as a baby in the 1970s.

.....

The physical infrastructure of missions, government institutions and children's homes was often very poor and resources were insufficient to improve them or to keep the children adequately clothed, fed and sheltered. WA's Chief Protector, A O Neville, later described the conditions at the Moore River Settlement in the 1920s (Neville had no control over the Settlement from 1920 until 1926, his jurisdiction being limited to the State's north during that period).

Moore River Settlement had rapidly declined under a brutal indifference. Here 'economy' had taken the form of ignoring maintenance and any improvement of buildings, reducing to a minimum the diet of 'inmates' and doing away with the use of cutlery - the children in the compounds being forced to eat with their hands. The salaries of attendant and teachers had been reduced and anything that was not essential to the rudimentary education available was removed. Even toys, such as plasticine, were removed from the classroom. Unhappiness and the desperate anxiety to locate and rejoin family members led to a sharp increase in absconders and runaways. Punishment was harsh and arbitrary and the 'inmates' feared the Police trackers who patrolled the settlement and hunted down escapees (quoted by Jacobs 1990 on page 123).
Doris Pilkington described the conditions as 'more like a concentration camp than a residential school for Aboriginal children' (Pilkington 1996 page 72).

Young men and women constantly ran away (this was in breach of the Aborigines Act). Not only were they separated from their families and relatives, but they were regimented and locked up like caged animals, locked in their dormitory after supper for the night. They were given severe punishments, including solitary confinements for minor misdeeds (Choo 1989 page 46).

.....

There was no food, nothing. We was all huddled up in a room ... like a little puppy-dog ... on the floor ... Sometimes at night time we'd cry with hunger, no food ... We had to scrounge in the town dump, eating old bread, smashing tomato sauce bottles, licking them. Half of the time the food we got was from the rubbish dump.

Confidential evidence 549, Northern Territory: man removed to Kahlin Compound at 3 years in the 1930s; subsequently placed at The Bungalow.

It's a wonder we all survived with the food we got. For breakfast we got a bit of porridge with saccharine in it and a cup of tea. The porridge was always dry as a bone. Lunch was a plate of soup made out of bones, sheeps' heads and things like that, no vegetables. For dinner we had a slice of bread with jam and a cup of tea. After our dinner we were locked up in a dormitory for the night.

WA woman who lived at Moore River Settlement from 1918 until 1939, quoted by Haebich 1982 on page 59.

In WA even the Chief Protector himself recognised the sufferings of many of the children he had placed 'in service'.

A good home with a kindly mistress is heaven to a coloured girl of the right type, yet failures are often due to the attitude of employers and their families. It does not help matters much to have the children in a family refer to their mother's coloured help as a 'dirty black nigger' or a 'black bitch' - such are amongst the complaints that the girls used to bring to me. One lad told me that when he asked for his wages, the Boss said, 'What does a black -- like you want with money, you ought to be shot' ... I must confess that as regards some of the homes I personally visited, I could not blame the employee, indeed I felt like apologising to him for being the means of placing him in such a position (Neville 1947 page 190).

When I was thirteen I started contract work. I did not ask to go to work. The white officials just told us we had to go to work and they wrote out a contract for us. My first job was on L. Station, Winton. I was employed to do housework but I had to do everything. Looking after Mrs E's invalid mother - including bathing her and taking her to the toilet. I did washing, ironing, house cleaning, cooked and served meals, looked after the yard, chopped wood, milked cows, did bore casing, rod placement, water pumping and did fencing with Mr E. I had to eat my meals from a tin plate and drank from a tin mug, I ate my meals on the wood heap. I was given different food to what the E's ate. Sometimes I was just allowed a couple of eggs - I was often very hungry. I had a room at the end of the shearer's shed (the shed could accommodate up to 24 shearers, during shearing time). It was small, windowless and there was no lighting. I had a wogga for a bed - made out of hessian [stuffed with straw], a bag for cover and a potato bag for a cupboard. I was very nervous there especially coming from the dormitory life where we were either guarded or locked up. I was thirteen at the time Mr E wanted to rape me. I rushed around to his car pulled out the shotgun and instead of shooting him I pushed him in the bore tank. He never tried anything else since. I told Mrs E and she told me that it was a lie, that he wouldn't touch a black person. I told the Superintendent at Cherbourg. He wouldn't believe me.

"You cannot do good things to Aboriginal people, you can only do good things with Aboriginal people. And unless the Aboriginal people themselves are part of this and are consulted and brought on board and it's what they want to happen and it's happening with government it won't work."

I think both sides should be sentenced to 5 years community service for over-acting and using a very bad script.

Of the two sides, the faults of the Aboriginals are the lesser however. Turning some into all, and making a generation out of it made great copy for the front pages of the newspapers, but has allowed attacks to be made that can seem to cast doubts on the very real awfulnesses that were done in the name of the state.

Another fault was to make it all sound so bad, that in this enlightened age there was no chance that a high proportion of the same things were not still going on. WE could not be as bad as that, so no need to review what IS happening.

So now you have many of the posters in this thread prattling on about how much has been contributed to aboriginals in the way of welfare and look how they sniff it up their noses and piss it all down the sink. Another set of exaggerations.

Suddenly that well known moderate Andrew Bolt is unable to find 10 persons who were stolen while every radio program under the Australian sun (and under a few clouds of late) has had no difficulty in finding dozens - every day for months!

The white settlement of Australia did involve taking Aboriginals land. Yes there was a policy of assimilation. I can remember a set of Blue Hills episodes written many years ago explaining how melanism in Aboriginals is a recessive gene and so half castes intermarrying were unlikely to produce black offspring.

Most of the posts saying we have nothing to be sorry about, are simply making the point that the welfare "delivered" to some Aboriginals has not been well done.

The first problem was the WIlson report went for sensationalism at the expense of accuracy and at the same time ignored the fairly obvious point that many of the policies continue in effect to this very day (and they do for whites as well!). That allowed a mass of criticism that totally missed the point.

The next one was that Howard was so stubborn, he could not see that saying sorry was a sensible step and allowed a relatively minor issue to become transformed to a major one.

Yes, the way in which welfare is actually used is a problem. But we had ten years of doing nothing and then Howard sent the army in. For gods sake the army. Of course those with a memory slightly greater than that of the average gnat, would have remembered that Dr Herron (the very well-intentioned first Howard Min for Ab Affairs) also sent in the army in 1996-97. So it was a repeat of a basic strategy that had failed already.

Something does need to be done.

Of course the Australian population with its general abstemiousness is in a great position to lecture Aboriginals for their inability to cope with alcohol.

Quoting QANTAS077 (Reply 23):You cannot do good things to Aboriginal people, you can only do good things with Aboriginal people. And unless the Aboriginal people themselves are part of this and are consulted and brought on board and it's what they want to happen and it's happening with government it won't work."

Totally agree with you. As i said a number of times if apologising for the Stolen Generation will mean this can commence then I am all for it. I just feel the step of writing a speech is easy. Fixing the problem will be difficult.

Like I said in an earlier post I truly hope that all those that have fought so hard for this apology will continue to fight with equal vigour for improvements in the lives of the Aboriginal people of today that are suffering right now.

Quoting QFA380 (Thread starter):I personally believe this is a terrible idea, with all the things we give them they still show us no respect and take everything they're given for granted.

Totally agree. What is the point of this whole apology anyway? I don't think it would mean anything nor make a difference in the lives of majority of the Aborigines.

Quoting QANTAS077 (Reply 18):what have we given them? what have you given them personally? get off your high horse and realise that this is NOT our land, it was inhabited long before white man ever set foot here, now tell me again, what is it that you've given the Aboriginal people?

Qantas...I have to disagree with you here. Aboriginal people have access to everything for free. Yet they don't make use of it. Example 1: We had an aboriginal guy in our class at uni (this was during my undergrad days), everyone treated him just like another regular guy, until he stole a laptop from the lab and was caught and expelled later. You tell me..why did he do that? Couldn't he have been like the other 100 non-aboriginal students and just study?!

Example 2: I was mugged (for the first time in my life) in KGI...guess who mugged me? Yes..3 aboriginal youths.

I have been directly involved in these two instances ..and that certainly doesn't give me the impression that I should respect them (the aboriginal youths, at least). If they don't respect us, then we cannot respect them. Period.

Let it be known that i did not vote for Kevin Rudd. He has deceived the Australian public, if only he disclosed his intentions during the election cycle we would not have this creep. Ironically it was Peter Garrett that actually told the truth "don't worry, when we get in we will change all that".

I don't believe that an apology was neccessary. It simply opens the flood gates to compensation. Sadly many of those who will be claiming compensation weren't even part of the stolen generation.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 27):I don't believe that an apology was neccessary. It simply opens the flood gates to compensation. Sadly many of those who will be claiming compensation weren't even part of the stolen generation.

That exact same argumentation had been played in post-war Germany as well regarding the official position towards the Holocaust survivors. I'm just happy and relieved that we've collectively chosen a different path than that one.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 27):Let it be known that i did not vote for Kevin Rudd. He has deceived the Australian public, if only he disclosed his intentions during the election cycle we would not have this creep. Ironically it was Peter Garrett that actually told the truth "don't worry, when we get in we will change all that".

That was in June - BTW he did not say it then because he was not Head of Gov and that is who should have said it. He did. Had Howard not made such a ridiculous fuss over NOT saying it, it would be half the issue it is now.

Well done Dr Nelson, always knows how to snatch defeat out of a gracious act. Extraordinary. It must be the Nelson touch. Is there a Lady Hamilton I have to ask! Maybe not cos Nelson does all his own poses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma,_Lady_Hamilton

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 27):
Let it be known that i did not vote for Kevin Rudd. He has deceived the Australian public, if only he disclosed his intentions during the election cycle we would not have this creep. Ironically it was Peter Garrett that actually told the truth "don't worry, when we get in we will change all that".

I don't believe that an apology was neccessary. It simply opens the flood gates to compensation. Sadly many of those who will be claiming compensation weren't even part of the stolen generation.

for godsake, its been on the books for the past decade, if you don't know that by now then your living under a bloody rock, jesus, Rudd spoke about it in Parliament as opposition leader many times last year...get your head out of the clouds and stop talking about deception like Howard was the only person never to deceive the nation...think workchoices, I don't recall Howard mentioning that in his 2004 campaign.

Quoting Springbok747 (Reply 26):
Qantas...I have to disagree with you here. Aboriginal people have access to everything for free. Yet they don't make use of it. Example 1: We had an aboriginal guy in our class at uni (this was during my undergrad days), everyone treated him just like another regular guy, until he stole a laptop from the lab and was caught and expelled later. You tell me..why did he do that? Couldn't he have been like the other 100 non-aboriginal students and just study?!

Example 2: I was mugged (for the first time in my life) in KGI...guess who mugged me? Yes..3 aboriginal youths.

I have been directly involved in these two instances ..and that certainly doesn't give me the impression that I should respect them (the aboriginal youths, at least). If they don't respect us, then we cannot respect them. Period.

guess what, I was nearly killed by 3 aboriginals and I have learned to forgive and understand what it means to them having a symbolic apology, so save your bullshit story, you choose to let the negative that happened to you influence your judgement, that is the difference between you and I.

I know people who've been assaulted by whites, yet they still respect them...get over what happened to you and try and move forward.

I don't think the holocaust can really be compared to the stolen generation. The holocaust was the systematic destruction of many groups with that very intention. The stolen generation was a relatively small group taken from their families in an attempt to better their lives. During that same time (1910-35) more white children were removed from their parents then Aboriginals. To link it back to the holocaust, it would be like apologising to the Polish without recognising the Jews.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 31):I don't think the holocaust can really be compared to the stolen generation.

Different extent of the crime, but in both cases a collective apology to the collective victims is appropriate.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 31):The stolen generation was a relatively small group taken from their families in an attempt to better their lives.

You're automatically assuming "only the best intentions" and are summarily excluding the apparently very much existing racism at least at that time. That looks more than just a bit fishy to me.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 31):During that same time (1910-35) more white children were removed from their parents then Aboriginals.

a) To the extent that those removals were injustifiable or were culpably negligent in their consequences, any non-aboriginal victims would deserve to be included in the same collective apology.

b) Only the aboriginal victims were apparently removed with the expressed intention (and with the actual consequence) of destroying their connection to their parental culture, as damaged as that may already have been at the time. That on its own is by definition a severe human rights violation which none of the immigrant children had to suffer.

c) Apparently the aboriginal victims were continually exposed to harrassment, discrimination and treatment as lesser individuals as a result of their abduction.

Quoting GREATANSETT (Reply 31):To link it back to the holocaust, it would be like apologising to the Polish without recognising the Jews.

Quoting Klaus (Reply 12):Completely indefensible would be more like it.

The fact is every bit of info there is 100% true.

Quoting QFA380 (Reply 13):The parents of the stolen generation were alcoholics, last year we had to do an excursion to listen to some Aboriginals talk about stuff. They said often fathers would beat and kill their own family. Noone cries foul these days when the Department of Community Services takes a child away from abusive parents, yet for the Aboriginals they must have preferred to stay with their parents. There were as many or more kids saved and given the chance for a great future.

Their real parents are/were the problem, the majority are alcoholics and will do anything to get alcohol, they will even move towns if there are restrictions put in place and make their families live on the streets so the parents can get alcohol, this happened in Broome recently as the WA govt put in restrictions on full strength alchohol and everyone is leaving town to get alcohol. They are chronic gamblers, go down to the pub/TAB and guess whos in there spending their "Welfare" money from centrelink......

Quoting Springbok747 (Reply 26):Example 2: I was mugged (for the first time in my life) in KGI...guess who mugged me? Yes..3 aboriginal youths.

I see theft everytime i go to the shops, and they are only 5-10 years old, its a joke and all they get is a slap on the hand. But they even rob each other as well, there was a good case up here, 2 guys stole some stuff from a school, then took it home only to get stolen again, then he stole it back and the people that stole it from him then got it stolen back reported it missing yet it had the high school engraved on all the components. So they all got charged.

They get paid to go to school, they get free money for school lunches, free bus service to school, free tutoring sessions yet they all throw it away, alot of parents don't care for the kids and let them run wild in the shops.

Ive caught them in my back yard and snooping around my car.

Id like to see how many people here have been to a community or live with them in a town, your opinion will most certainly change.

There are a few good ones that dont want the money etc they want to work hard, but they are given a bad name by the rest of the scum.

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 37):Their real parents are/were the problem, the majority are alcoholics and will do anything to get alcohol,

where is your evidence that backs up this bullshit? don't spit out your simple version of events without proof.

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 37):this happened in Broome recently as the WA govt put in restrictions on full strength alchohol and everyone is leaving town to get alcohol. They are chronic gamblers, go down to the pub/TAB and guess whos in there spending their "Welfare" money from centrelink......

oh for fuck sake, White Australian's are not much better, we just don't hear about their exploits. I don't see you pissing on white Australian's that lose their house and family while they piss it up or blow it all at Crown, get real champ, its not exclusive to the indigenous population.

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 37):I see theft everytime i go to the shops, and they are only 5-10 years old, its a joke and all they get is a slap on the hand.

what do you suggest? lock them up in adult prisons? They do it for a reason in case you haven't figured that out, usually because they are being neglected by their parents, but you saying that those stolen in between the 30's & 70's is entirely because of their parents is absolute bullshit & stinks of Howardism and his denials.

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 37):They get paid to go to school, they get free money for school lunches, free bus service to school, free tutoring sessions yet they all throw it away, alot of parents don't care for the kids and let them run wild in the shops.

they get given money too go to school and study what's relevant for white folk, make it relevant for the black folk and you might see things change, black kids have no need for science in the outback, they'd be better off learning practical skills.

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 37):like to see how many people here have been to a community or live with them in a town, your opinion will most certainly change.

There are a few good ones that dont want the money etc they want to work hard, but they are given a bad name by the rest of the scum.

experienced it myself and for the most part its because we've neglected their needs...then again you should get your ass down to Perth and move into a community where white fellas like running a-mok too. Just need to read the worst and you'll soon discover that whites aren't much better...look at the Mullaloo incident on Australia day.

just as there are a good whites and bad whites, why aren't you calling them scum.

The problem is that any kind of "info" is only a small part of that despicable list and even that part looks more than just a little dubious in its (over?)simplified form.

The main part is the claim throughout...

a) that each of those claims applied to every person of aboriginal descent,

b) that despite obviously opposing evidence, in "reality" the recent immigrants were "actually" the "victims" of the "dumb" and "lazy" aboriginals,

c) that the recent immigrants were so immeasurably superior in their morality that they even deigned to "apologize" to the aboriginal population even though the mere consideration was "obviously" an unreasonable imposition of the highest order.

I have seen this kind of list before, and it wasn't about aboriginal australians. Just guess...

Quoting Fumanchewd (Reply 40):Interestingly enough, I've heard some commentators here exhort voters to elect Obama to finally compensate and "get over" slavery. Somehow it is supposed to heal us of the guilt that I don't feel.

WTF? What happened to voting for the best person?

As a rethorical question posed on Fox "News", perhaps?

Just compare the countries which had their respective first women in charge (chancellor Merkel in our case, Thatcher in Britain etc.) - the earth didn't move (well, it may have recoiled a little in Thatcher's case ), but the event sort of crossed out a presumable glass ceiling which has once undoubtedly existed.

These things do still matter - if not quite as much as and not quite as long as some people may believe.

My own feeling is that the 'apology,' though it's currently stirring up a lot of controversy, is largely beside the point. The point is that no-one on either side of the argument has yet found a way even to START solving the problems faced by, and presented by, the aboriginal community.

Every Australian government for the last forty years has made increasingly strenuous efforts to help aboriginals escape from poverty, poor health, unemployment, and all their other afflictions. But this has largely boiled down to 'throwing money at them.' I believe that all adult aboriginals receive allowances 'as of right' that are equal to or greater than the old age pension paid to other Australians; and many more, depending on which tribe they can prove they belong to, receive income from 'land rights' as well. My son manages a motor business in the northern part of Western Australia and tells me that it is commonplace for aboriginals to come in to 'impulse-buy' expensive 4WDs; in the process providing proof of annual incomes that are often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. One bizarre feature of deals like that is that they usually enter their occupation on the order form as 'unemployed.'

But the other side of the coin is that levels of undesirable social trends, particularly the linked problems of the sexual abuse of children and alcoholism, are rising every year, and are now so high in most outback aboriginal communities that last year the government has had no option but to 'intervene' - meaning take direct control of many communities. The northern states are thinly-populated and neither the state nor the federal police have the manpower to carry out this task; so the government has been forced to assign a lot of it to the Australian Army.

So, at the same time that this apology is being offered to aborigines in general, many up-country communities are having to be subjected to what amounts to 'martial law' (an army or police post in every village, plus regular patrols, alcohol bans, etc.) to maintain some sort of order; and above all protect the children as far as possible. Forget Martin Luther King, we've had to re-introduce the 'real' John Wayne stuff......

Of course there are frequent promises, from all sides of politics and the aboriginal 'establishment,' to 'solve the problem' - we've heard plenty more just today. But the problem continues - and, on all the evidence, it's getting worse year by year, not better.

In my (limited) experience, the aborigines consist of three main groups:-

1. In the major cities there are small numbers of aboriginals who have 'integrated,' found jobs and raised families, and are virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the increasingly multi-racial Australian community. I'm acquainted with a couple of such families personally, and know that (probably unsurprisingly) three out of the four parents concerned are in fact among the luckier members of the 'stolen generation;' separated from their parents in the sixties, but well-treated and given the opportunity to get an education and grow up in a city, while keeping thier family links. However, for the avoidance of doubt, I am quite sure that only a minority of the 'stolen' had the same sort of luck; I'm all in favour of the 'apology' being given to the less fortunate ones.

2. In the outback, and indeed the country areas of the more populated states, there are aboriginals living in isolated communities that are still back in the Stone Age to all intents and purposes; presided over by 'elders' who have despotic power and don't always (maybe don't often) use it wisely.

3. In between, there are aboriginals living in towns (VERY prosperous, 'job-rich' towns in the case of northern WA, which is at the heart of the resources boom) who form a virtually-separate society. Two impressions predominate from my first visit to northern WA. The first was when I announced that I was going for my habitual (at home) evening walk. I was told that I would have to be raving mad to try it, I'd be mugged within minutes. The other one was seeing groups of aboriginal teenagers walking round in cargo pants, brightly-coloured T-shirts, baseball caps, and sunglasses, 'menacing' passers-by with their eyes - obviously mimicking the black youngsters who do the same sort of thing in many cities in the USA (which they'll have seen in movies and on TV).

God knows what the answer is. On the face of it it's obvious - pour in money, education, health care, 'law and order,' make-believe jobs, 'counsellors' etc. But Australian governments have been doing lots of that for many years, it hasn't shown any sign of working so far.

The only thing I'd say to our overseas fellow-posters is, don't be left with the impression that Australia isn't trying. The vast majority of Australians are open-minded and open-hearted, and genuinely believe in giving everyone a 'fair go.' But they're also pretty realistic - and many of them (including me, I'm afraid) feel that too many of the aboriginals (ESPECIALLY their 'community leaders,' most of whom seem content to make a fat living out of 'fighting prejudice' and a career in TV appearances) simply aren't 'trying' in their turn.

"Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards.." - Leonardo da Vinci

Quoting NAV20 (Reply 42):The only thing I'd say to our overseas fellow-posters is, don't be left with the impression that Australia isn't trying.

I don't have such an impression. My explicit point has just been all along that the matter of a formal apology for a certain collective mistreatment is completely separate from any social remedies or even compensation.

I'd have loved to see a bit more of that spirit around here, that's for sure.

Quoting NAV20 (Reply 42):But they're also pretty realistic - and many of them (including me, I'm afraid) feel that too many of the aboriginals (ESPECIALLY their 'community leaders,' most of whom seem content to make a fat living out of 'fighting prejudice' and a career in TV appearances) simply aren't 'trying' in their turn.

That sounds plausible... but as experiences elsewhere have shown (as explained by others above), a big part of the problem can be the misguided attempt to just press a marginalized minority into a specific idea of their presumable lives-to-be without bothering to actually work together with the affected people themselves. That kind of attempt almost never works.

To the army deployment: We've also had requests for interior uses of our army, but the bottom line is usually just politicians trying to "save" on expenses for the regular police force by "simply" using the army "which is already paid for anyway". Highly misguided and at least in our case highly problematic constitutionally.

My personal perspective in such situations: When police is needed, police should be deployed - and funded properly. The army is only for external defense and domestically just for natural disaster relief.

Quoting NAV20 (Reply 42):My own feeling is that the 'apology,' though it's currently stirring up a lot of controversy, is largely beside the point. The point is that no-one on either side of the argument has yet found a way even to START solving the problems faced by, and presented by, the aboriginal community.

Thank you I have been trying to find a way to communicate exactly this point

Quoting Klaus (Reply 43):To the army deployment: We've also had requests for interior uses of our army, but the bottom line is usually just politicians trying to "save" on expenses for the regular police force by "simply" using the army "which is already paid for anyway".

Problem is, Klaus, that police here are paid for by state governments. Northern Territory taxpayers, for example, simply couldn't AFFORD the extra numbers required. Additionally, the Australian Army remains, just about unarguably, the best force of its kind in the world; the Federal Police, besides being low in numbers and already over-stretched by overseas commitments in places like East Timor, is distinctly 'moderate' by comparison. So the Army was the best (and only) practical choice.

Thanks for the kind words, Cupralbiza. Tell you the truth, I almost didn't post it after I'd written it. In the first place, I thought it might be too controversial and too likely to be misunderstood. Secondly, stemming from a career mostly spent 'getting things done' in one way or another, I usually like to put a 'Conclusions and Recommendations' section at the end of my posts.

In this case, I simply haven't a clue as to what we should try next........

"Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards.." - Leonardo da Vinci

There is also the issue of a shortage of state police numbers nationally. So its not simply a money issue but a resources issue. The Army is by far the best equipped to handle this.

Quoting NAV20 (Reply 45):In this case, I simply haven't a clue as to what we should try next........

NAV20 - you are not alone there. I think the whole nation is in the same boat. Of course many people and groups will speak in very broad strokes - "We need to be more inclusive, We need to be more engaging with the Aboriginal people" Those sort of words really frustrate me. What do they mean? How will they improve things? We as a nation need to come up with actual ideas. It is so simple to talk in such vague languauge. But what does it mean? I fear it means that as you put it NAV20 "we simply haven't a clue as to what we should try next"

I was once involved with one, Cupralbiza - a 'Craft Centre' near Ayers Rock. I was sharing an office with another self-employed 'consultant,' in his case management consultancy; and he was working on a project there. We used to help each other a bit, 'free of charge,' and he first of all asked me roughly to check out the design/costings, which were fine. And, given the huge numbers of bored tourists round there (Ayers Rock being the ONLY attraction) it looked like a surefire venture commercially.

But then he asked me about the commercial side. The project was based on the idea that the stall-holders would sell their 'artefacts' from stalls within the building, and pay commission on sales to the building owner (in this case the Federal Government). He asked me how that should be organised and of COURSE I said that the stall-holders should only issue 'chits' and the actual money should be collected (and recorded) at a central checkout run by the government - otherwise they'd never know about or see half or more of the 'commission.'

He came to me later and said that the local aboriginals didn't like that idea. What a surprise. He ended up getting me hired for a couple of days and we flew up there for a meeting - nice trip in a vintage Cessna 310, the pilot noticed that I was the only one not getting airsick and kind of 'hired' me as FO.....

At the meeting everyone said their piece but the 'elders' were immovable. During the coffee-break I took the most talkative and genial one aside and said, "Look, straight up - if there isn't a proper checkout system I honestly don't think this project is going to happen." All trace of 'geniality' disappeared instantly and he told me to stop interfering and f***k off back to Melbourne where I belonged.

Turned out we were both right. I went back to Melbourne as instructed (getting the chance to 'hold the pole' for a few glorious minutes on the way) - and the Craft Centre project (my mate and I AND the civil servants were freely calling it the 'Graft Centre' all the way back) duly didn't happen........

[Edited 2008-02-12 22:23:31]

"Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards.." - Leonardo da Vinci

Now they want more bloody money! now Kevin has admitted they done wrong, these "Elders" are going to want millions of dollars, which the rest of the community will never see, just like the money for land.....where does all that money go??

Quote:"(From) this moment, Australia can be imagined as a different place - a place where Aboriginal citizens no longer live in third world living conditions,"

Reality check, they choose to live like that, the government builds houses and they trash them. Go to Halls Creek, brand spanking new houses, are TRASHED! waste of money. Plenty of infrastructure there yet everything is vandalised and its just like a rubbish tip.

They get everything no one else in this country gets, totally free education and practically free university......third world my ass.

What needs to be done, is not pay them give them vouchers that can be used at shops like woolies/coles for food then they cant go and spend money on grog/smokes or gamble it away.

They talk about being raped etc, well you read some of the stories its not white people raping these people its the so called "Elders" of the community's.

Quote:Mr Mansell, who was in Canberra for the PM's apology, still believes that the door has been left open for compensation.

"The moment of the apology didn't lend itself really to the prime minister announcing a compensation package," Mr Mansell said.

"But we won't rest until we get that compensation package. We know the prime minister, because he didn't expressly rule it out with an apology, knows we're going to come to him.

Can tell you know there will be a nationwide uproar if there is going to be more money going to these people.

7 news Perth done a phone poll last night, so will be interesting to see the results tonight whether an apology was needed!

We can argue all day but everyone has their opinions and for the most part they cant be changed, Sorry isn't going to make any difference except an excuse to extort more money from the Government.